


up the airy mountain

by Casylum



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Victorian, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 03:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1804477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casylum/pseuds/Casylum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he's seventeen, and she's fourteen, she's his Lord's daughter, and his friend. When he's thirty, and she's twenty-seven, he hasn't seen her in five years, and she's marrying another man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	up the airy mountain

**Author's Note:**

> Up the airy mountain,  
> Down the rushy glen,  
> We daren't go a-hunting  
> For fear of little men  
> -William Allingham, "The Fairies"

Márta, 1845  
An Rinn, An Déise, Éire  
(March, 1845  
Ring, County Waterford, Ireland)

 

When the Marquess and his family had arrived at the family residence in An Déise, the tenants in the surrounding villages had assumed they’d leave soon enough. The estate, a sprawling heap of multi-styled stone called Waterford Hall--even though it was really more of a castle--had stood mostly empty for three or four generations, with the reigning Marquess or Marchioness preferring to do business from a distance, usually Baile Átha Cliath, or lately, Londain.

“Never seen a Nolan for longer than a fortnight,” Killian’s father had grumbled, before going back to pounding away at one of the horseshoes he’d agreed to make while the local blacksmith visited his sister’s family over in Aird Mhór. Killian himself had nodded in agreement, and gone back to carving a chess set for old Mark Holmwood’s birthday.

That had been in Feabhra.

It was Márta now, past his birthday, and the Nolans hadn’t budged. In fact, they seemed to be settling further in, with the Marquess doing repairs on some of the Hall’s more disreputable looking outbuildings, and the Marchioness riding out, sometimes biweekly, to bring food to the needy and meet the land’s tenants. The tenants themselves were, understandably, suspicious. Things had been going wrong in the fields on a horribly widespread basis, a crisis that developed just around the time the absent Waterfords had returned, and enough people clung to some aspect of the old ways to cry bad omen.

Personally, Killian thought it was simply that they thought it would be easier to deal when the Marquess and his family finally left if they didn’t get too attached. He was of the same mind, but he currently had a problem that was keeping him from holding to those convictions: There’s a girl sitting a good fifteen feet up in the tree he’s been sent to cut down.

He knows it’s a girl for two reasons. One, there were no blonde boys for fifty miles outside An Rinn, and two, even if there had been one, none of them would’ve had the patience (or the know how) to braid it in a near foot long rope down their backs every morning. But following knowing it was a girl was the fact that he still has to deal with her, and that’s where he’s stalled. If it’d been one of the village boys, he could’ve just shouted at them, used his father’s authority and his--admittedly limited--reputation to scare them back to the ground.

Girls though, Killian knows, with all the confidence of a seventeen year old boy, girls were trickier.

“Hallo, the tree,” he says finally, leaning on the long handle of the axe he’d been sent out with.

The girl starts, sways a bit, then turns around, peering down through the foliage. “What’s that?”

Killian frowns. She was speaking mBéarla, not the Gaeilge everyone else in these parts spoke almost exclusively.

“I said, hallo, the tree,” he repeats, switching over to Béarla as his mind tries to remember if any Sasanaigh had moved to the area recently, and if any of _them_ had daughters.

“Oh,” the girl says. “Hallo. Did my father send you? Because I promise, I do know what I’m doing. Trees may not be very common in London, but Hyde Park has its share, and I’ve climbed them lots of times.”

“What?” Killian blinks. That was not the response he’d expected. Nor the response he wanted. Only one man had the ability to send somebody else after his daughter, instead of coming himself, as well as being a Sasanaigh, and that man was someone Killian would rather not meet. “Uh, no. Your father didn’t send me. Mine did.”

“What for?”

“To chop down the tree you’re sitting in. D’ya see the rope?” He waves at the twisted cord tied around the trunk, nearly blending into the bark. “That means this is the one. So if you wouldn’t mind…” He trails off.

“I see,” the girl says, voice contemplative. “And you are absolutely sure it is this tree? It’s not like that story Siofra Irving told me where the leprechaun tied a ribbon around every tree in the forest just to frustrate the man who took his gold?”

Killian snorts. “Don’t be telling my Da that you’re thinking of him the same sentence as leprechauns, or he’ll come after you.”

“So it’s not like that?”

“No, lass.”

“So I do have to come down?”

“Aye, lass.”

“Well,” she says, then pauses. “That might be a bit difficult.”

“How’s that?”

“You remember how I said there were definitely trees in London, and I definitely climbed them?”

“Yes,” Killian says, drawing the word out as a grin starts to tug at the corners of his mouth.

“As it turns out,” the girl huffs, “the trees in London are a lot...a lot _bloody shorter_ than the ones in Ireland, so it is decidedly harder to jump down once one has climbed too high.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” Killian says, trying not to laugh, “that you never learned to climb _down_?”

She sniffs. “It didn’t seem like a necessary skill.”

“And now?”

“All too necessary,” she says glumly.

He can’t help it; he laughs, the sound slipping out as he bends nearly double, eyes still looking up at where he can see the yellow of her hair through the green of the leaves.

“Would you,” she says, and Killian can almost hear her teeth grinding, “be so kind as to help me down? Preferably _before_ you chop the tree down?”

“Aye, I could,” he says, then leans the axe up against the other side of the tree, before circling around to stand directly below her, holding out his hands as he looks up. “Ready?”

She nods, biting her lip and shifting her grip on the branch under her. “Ready.”

“Jump,” he says, and she does, pushing out as far as she can before she drops, her body a blur of brown and gold before it hits him almost as hard as that sack of potatoes Mrs. MacLachlan had thrown at him three summers ago. He stumbles back a step, then lowers her to the ground.

“Thank you,” she says, once she’s regained her balance.

“So, lass,” he says, after he’s stepped back, and they've both brushed themselves off, “have you a name? Or am I doomed to call you simply Cailín Crann?”

“What’s that mean?” She asks, face scrunching a bit as she pushes a stray bit of hair off her face. “Cailín Crann? I’ve been asking, you know, about the Gaelic and all, and the only thing I’ve learned is that it’s definitely _the_ Gaelic, not just Gaelic, and that ‘cailíní amaideach Sasanaigh’, which I assume is not particularly nice, aren't worthy of twisting their tongues around it.”

“It means ‘tree girl’,” Killian says after a moment, “and the other bit that you quoted means, and I’m not exactly sure, since your accent is a bit off, but I’m relatively certain it means ‘silly English girls’.”

“So nicer than I thought, but still not nice,” she replies.

“They’ve got a point, though,” Killian says, almost kicking himself as the words leave his mouth.

“How do you mean?”

“You Sasanaigh took away our King,” he starts, and now he’s definitely kicking himself, but he can’t stop now, “our land, our customs, anything and everything that might have labeled us as being hÉireannaigh--that’s Irish, to you--up to, and including, our language. It’s all we've go left, so teaching it to some Sasanach girl who only wants to know whether she’s being insulted, well.” He spreads his hands and shrugs. “It’s almost too much.”

She’s wide eyed, looking at him almost fearfully, and Killian’s afraid that he’s slipped into a heavier accent than normal because of the emotion behind his words. He generally only speaks mBéarla when doing business for his Da up in Baile Átha Cliath, and that’s about as dry a conversation as they come.

He raises a hand and scrubs it over his face, sighing a bit as he does so. “Sorry to go off at you like that. It’s…,” he pauses for a moment, then adds ruefully, “a touchy subject.”

“I’ll say,” she replies emphatically, then sticks her hand out. “Emma.”

“Killian,” he says, reaching out and grasping it like he would any of his father’s workers. At this point, if she’s not going to mention her father, then he’s not going to press her. Besides, so long as he doesn't say anything, he won’t have to call--he looks her over as she glances to the side--a fourteen year old girl in breeches ‘my lady’.

There’d be time enough for that later. Right now, he’s got a tree to chop down, and a girl who’s eyeing the axe he means to do it with with an alarming amount of curiosity.

 

~~~

 

Meitheamh, 1845  
An Rinn, An Déise, Éire  
(June, 1845  
Ring, County Waterford, Ireland)

 

The door to his father’s forge opens with a bang.

“Killian, I know you’re in here,” Emma shouts, her voice echoing in the way that means she’s cupped her hands around her mouth in the--erroneous, in his opinion--belief that it makes her louder. She’s loud enough on her own, she doesn’t need hands to help with that.

“Just because you know I’m here, doesn't mean you can come barging in like some sort of ridiculous cow,” he shouts back, not bothering to move from the stool he’s currently sitting on, surrounded by piles of wood shavings. If she really wants to talk to him, she’ll come on back, or keep shouting at him from the door. It makes no nevermind to him, either way.

“That doesn't even make any sense,” Emma says, her voice getting lower as she picks her way through various stacks of metal and half-finished products. “Cows don’t shout, and they certainly don’t do it politely from the door, all announcement like.”

“Was that what you were doing? Announcing yourself?”

“Well, it was better than shouting ‘Greetings, ‘tis I, Emma, bow at your earliest convenience’,” she says as she comes up to where he’s sitting. “Is there another stool here?”

“Over there, somewhere,” he says, waving his carving knife to the left a bit. “And if you did that, you’d soon find that my earliest convenience was never.”

“I knew _that_ ,” Emma says, dragging the stool over and sitting down, “which is why I didn't say it. Mama says that if you say something, you should already know whether or not someone is going to do it, and plan your words accordingly.”

“Your mama is right,” Killian says with a grunt, peeling off an especially recalcitrant bit of wood. He and Emma have carefully avoided discussing what, exactly, it is that her parents do and are that requires them to have maxims like that, instead of simpler ones like ‘don’t leave the barn door open, you clot’. He does it because he doesn't want to have to deal with the formalities that proper knowledge of her station his sense of duty would force him to perform, but he can’t quite figure out why she hasn't dropped it into conversation herself. It’d certainly make her life easier, free from the teasing almost guaranteed to be received by a fourteen year old girl who hangs around a seventeen year old peasant boy and his idiot friends, but she stays mum.

It’s gotten to the point that most of the village is into the massive charade of denial, with a few of the nicer housewives even offering to teach her some of the Gaeilge, all the while looking at Killian like he should be teaching her anyway. Which he is, but he’ll never admit that to anyone.

“Humph,” Emma says, then falls quiet for a bit, the only sound the two of them breathing and the scrape of Killian’s knife across wood. “She wants me to wear dresses,” she says finally.

“What’s that?”

“My mother,” Emma waves her hands in an abortive motion of frustration before dropping them. “She wants me to start wearing dresses again. Says that if I keep gamboling about like some sort of idiot sheep in clothes unbefitting a lady--which why breeches are unbefitting a lady I’ll never know, they’re massively more practical--that I’ll forget what it’s like to dress properly and she ‘refuses to deal with that on top of all the other trials’.”

“She say that?”

“What?”

“That you’ll be giving her other trials.”

“Word for word,” Emma says, slumping.

“Glad to know it’s not just me, then,” Killian says, then lets out a short grunt when Emma kicks him in the shin. He raises an eyebrow. “See? Already a heathen savage, and it’s only been five months.”

“You’re a bad influence,” Emma mutters, and he grins.

 

~~~

 

Meán Fómhair, 1845  
An Rinn, An Déise, Éire  
(September, 1845  
Ring, County Waterford, Ireland)

 

There’s no harvest.

Which wasn't to say that things hadn't been planted in the spring. Things _had_ , but those things hadn't grown. Killian had been through over fifteen different fields in the past week, first out of a sense of duty, then out a sense of desperation as he and the workers with him found nothing but rot.

Out of the sixty-fields in the demesne of the Marquess of Waterford, only seven had any sort of crop, and most of that was stunted and partially worm ridden. An Rinn was potato country, as were most of the outlying villages and crofts, and from what Killian could gather, they were all looking at more than a lean winter.

He’d seen the Marquess ride through town a few days ago, as he was tromping off to yet another field, hoping against hope that this one would yield what it was supposed to, without any problems. Lord Nolan had _not_ looked happy, even as he moved through town at a brisk pace, and Emma had been conspicuously absent for almost a fortnight.

He pushes himself up from the stool he’d been resting on outside of his father’s shop, wiping a hand across his forehead as he squints at the sky, gauging the place of the sun. It’s around two o’clock he reckons, too late to go out into another field, especially since the nearest one that still needs help is about six leagues out to the west.

His father was over at the local tavern, meeting with some of the more landrich tenants, all of them trying to figure out how to keep the people of An Rinn, at least, fed. The ideal, his father had said, would be for them to figure something out before people realized just how close to they were to imminent starvation, and forgot human decency for the sake of personal preservation.

Killian, for his part, is just numb, the only thing breaking through the cloud the fear that the problems from the Marquess’ arrival, when suspicion and superstition had run rampant, will come back with a vengeance now that everything’s been laid out in the cold hard reality of bare fields and empty barns. If Lord and Lady Nolan have half the brains he thinks they do, they’d probably thought of the same things he has, and have kept Emma confined to the Hall.

 

~~~

 

Samhain, 1845  
An Rinn, An Déise, Éire  
(November, 1845  
Ring, County Waterford, Ireland)

 

It’s been two months, and Killian hasn't seen Emma once.

The whole countryside is tense, with people starting to stream northwest towards Gaillimh, with the hope of buying passage on one of the ships bound for the United States. “There’s land there,” one man had told Killian after he’d helped to shoe one of his horses, “land that gives back, instead of takes all you have and laughs in your face.”

It’s not as bad in An Déise as it could have been, as it is in the outlying areas where the Marquess’ influence wears thin. All of his investments are in Breataine and Indiach interests, not hÉireann, and he’s _here_ , which is more than can be said for half of the Sasana-residing hÉireann nobles. It’s that presence, and the fact that he’d shown he was willing to help before things got this bad that has people trusting him, instead of setting the countryside afire.

All of this Killian’s heard from a distance, either from his father, or the other tenants who’ve dealt with him as they try and plan for the next planting season. Today, however, he’s going up to the Hall, having wrangled the reports from what’s fast becoming something like a village council, a first for An Rinn, promising to deliver them to Lord Nolan’s Estate Manager. He figures that he can deliver the reports, and what he does after that is no one’s business but his own (and maybe Emma’s, if he can find her).

The trees lining the walk up to the Hall are bare, the trees finally reflecting the fields. Killian keeps to the left, wary of approaching coaches or horsemen; he’s seen enough dead men on the streets of Baile Átha Cliath to walk down even a rural road without proper care. When he comes in sight of the house, his first thought is that it looks a bit...shabby. Everything is just on the edge of underkempt, which says more about where the local populace’s focus has been for the last year or so, than it does about Marquess’s wealth.

He goes up to the front door and rings the bell set off to the side. There’s probably a side door, and he could waste a good twenty minutes looking for it, or he could put up with the butler’s inevitable snooty looks, and get to the Estate Manager in record time. To his surprise, it’s not a butler that opens the door, but the Marchioness.

“M’lady,” he says with a start, jerking half a bow before realizing that if he goes down any further he’s going to whack his head on the partially open door.

“Hello,” Lady Nolan says with a smile. “May I ask who’s calling?”

“Uh, Killian Jones, here for Greg Mendell,” he says, a hand going up to rub the back of his neck. “Can you tell me where to find his office? I’ve got--” he hefts the papers in his hands “--papers to drop off.”

“Killian Jones, was it?” Lady Nolan asks, an eyebrow going up as she steps back to let him in.

“Yes’m.”

“Any relation to a Liam Jones?” she asks as she starts to walk down a corridor.

Killian starts, then follows. “Aye, m’lady, that’d be my brother.”

“And Leroy Jones?”

“My father. Pardon, but how do you know my brother?” He feels like an idiot for asking, but Londain is a damn big city, and there must be a thousand Jones’ within its confines.

“What?” She turns around a corner, looking over her shoulder at him. “Oh, how do I know your brother? He helps run my husband’s club back in London.”

“I, ah, I see,” Killian says, and remains silent for the rest of the journey through the house.

“Here we are,” Lady Nolan says about two minutes later. “Just knock, and go in, that’s what everyone does.”

“Thank you, m’lady,” he says, already raising his hand.

Lady Nolan starts to walk away, before turning and calling, “Oh, and Killian?”

Killian pauses. “Yes, m’lady?”

“If you’re interested, she’s probably in the library that’s at the end of the hall.”

“I,” he starts, but she’s already swept out of sight.

 

~

 

Mendell lets him out after twenty minutes, eighteen of which were an intense interrogation on his personal feelings about the state of the County, both mentally and economically. Killian hadn't known that he knew that many technical words in mBéarla, or that he could string them together in something resembling coherence, but he had, and he did, and Mendell had said his goodbyes with a very thoughtful expression.

It’s only after he’s out in the hall, the door to Mendell’s office closed behind him, that he lets himself think about what the Marchioness had said. If he was reading it right, and he’d have to be an idiot to get it wrong, Emma was about fifty feet away from him, instead of buried in the twisting turns of the Hall, and therefore lost to him, not to mention the fact that Lady Nolan had almost directly given permission for him to go and find her.

It only took a moment for him to dither before he was striding down the corridor, trying his damndest to look like he belonged. When he gets to the double doors of the library, he pushes both open, figuring that if someone _does_ happen across them with a disapproving mind, he can at least say that he adhered at least minimally to the proprieties.

“Eala?” he calls, “Emma?” He’s got two seconds to worry that he’s got the wrong room when a small dervish in skirts hits his midsection and nearly knocks him over.

“Oh my god, you’re here,” she’s saying (in the Gaeilge, he notes, good for her). “I thought I’d have to die, and then _haunt_ you in order to see you again.”

“That extreme?” Killian says, laughing, pulling her back to hold both of her arms. “Climbing down the rose trellis, sneaking out the servant’s entrance, none of that’s possible? It has to be death and haunting?”

She nods, blonde hair flying. “I figure, if I’m haunting you, they can’t make me go back. Unless they get a priest, and uh--” she looks down, digging a toe into the carpet “--there aren’t exactly a lot of those around.”

“More than you’d think, but aye,” Killian says. “A priest might do, if he wasn’t forced to join you in the haunting first.”

She rolls her eyes. “It still stands that it’s unlikely.”

“Right,” he says, then asks a question that’s been nagging at him for the last few minutes. “Lass, who have you been speaking the Gaeilge with? I taught you some, I know that, but six months of odd tutoring and a two month break don’t make you _this_ fluent.”

“The servants,” Emma says, looking up at him. “Siofra Irving, you know, the one who told me the leprechaun story when I first got here? Well, she’s my ladies maid now, ever since the harvest started coming in bad, and all the rest of the staff are local hires, so I just sit in the kitchen with them as much as I can, listening.”

“And your parents?” Killian has to ask, even if he avoids mentioning them by name, the charade still hanging on by a thread. “They don’t mind their daughter learning the Gaeilge?”

“Oh, no,” she says, turning and pulling him along by dint of the fact that he’s still holding onto her arms, one of which he has to let go of to avoid falling over. She looks over her shoulder as she continues, and for a moment, all Killian can see is her mother. “Father says we’re Irish anyway, for all that our family’s been absent for the last hundred years or so since the last uprising, and Mother just gave me this _look_ before saying that it would be useful later in life and that I should continue with it and it was after _that_ that Siofra was hired on as my maid.”

She keeps talking after this, occasionally pausing and asking him for a word in mBéarla, but for the most part, Killian’s silent, leaning against the wall next to the window seat she leads him to before sitting down herself, just listening to her talk. She crosses her legs, he notices, as if she were wearing the breeches he’s accustomed to seeing her in, the fabric of her skirt twisting around her bent legs.

Finally, after a good fifteen minutes, she winds down. Killian’s about to push off the wall, make his excuses, and leave, when she looks up at him from where she’d been staring out onto the grounds, and asks, “How is it, out there? I’ve heard it’s bad, but that’s from Father and Mother, and the servants, but they’re all _here_ , mostly. You’ve been out in the fields, you said you would be, so. How is it?”

He does stand straight then, but only to sit down next to her, not to leave. “It’s bad, lass. Worse than you could imagine.” He breathes out heavily, looking away towards the deceptively green ground outside. “I’ve been through half the County, personally, and my Da, well he’s been through all of it, and nothing changes. Acres of rot and mold on every farm, and the rest of the harvests have been bad as well, though none as bad as the potatoes.”

“And Father?” Emma asks, shifting next to him. “Is what he’s able to do helping? And--” here she cuts off, and Killian looks over to see her staring out the window, lips pressed together and fists twisted into her overskirt.

“What?”

She looks down at her hands. “Why won’t they let me out of the house? I turned fifteen a few weeks ago, Killian, and my present was being allowed to go out on the roof for an hour.”

“Eala,” he starts, not knowing how to say this, precisely, but knowing he has to. “If you go back, if you slip out of this house and go down to the village, I cannot guarantee that you won’t get hurt.”

“Why--” Emma sputters before he cuts her off, looking back up at him as she does so.

“Because your family was never here,” Killian says patiently, “because when they got here, it was just as when people started to notice things were getting bad, and it’s as they’ve stayed that things have gotten worse. It may be damned hard to find a priest in plain sight, but it’s very easy to find someone who holds to the old ways between services, and the old ways say you’re bad luck.”

“But--”  Her face is red now, her eyes starting to narrow with anger as he cuts her off again.

“It doesn’t have to make sense, lass. It just has to put the blame _somewhere_ , on _someone_ , instead of on the land, which doesn’t care whether you hate it or love it, are fed or starve, live or die.”

“That,” Emma pronounces precisely after a moment or two of tense silence, “is idiotic.”

“Aye,” he agrees, leaning back against the window frame, “it is.”

 

~~~

 

Feabhra, 1846  
An Rinn, An Déise, Éire  
(February, 1846  
Ring, County Waterford, Ireland)

 

In the last few months, Killian’s been up to the Hall at least once a week, sometimes two. It’s always, to begin with, in order to bring reports up to Mendell, but after he’s handed them over and gone through the interrogation he’s come to expect from the man, he goes down to the kitchens, or to the library, and sits with Emma for an hour or so, just talking with her, helping her with the Gaeilge. He prefers it in the kitchen, because then he’s not alone with her, with the voice in the back of his mind screaming that today will be the day the Marquess or Marchioness storm in and demand that he leave on grounds of gross impropriety.

Not that he’s doing anything improper, far from it. In point of fact, Killian thinks this is the most proper he’s ever been in his life, and it’s killing him. He blames her birthday; seventeen and fourteen is impossible, eighteen and fifteen is pushing ridiculous, but seventeen and fifteen is close enough that he’s caught himself almost wondering what it might be like to take her out, dance with her, kiss her by her door before saying goodbye…

But that’s all impossible. He’s a blacksmith’s son, and she’s a Marquess’ daughter, even if they’ve never mentioned it. Her idea of a night out was probably a ball or something in Londain, not his village-style courtship. Besides, his birthday is in a few months, and they’ll be back at that awkwardly large age gap, and he won’t have to think about it (hopefully) for another year.

It helps that he’s been talking to his Da, and the rest of the village elders, and there’s a general consensus that the Marquess isn’t to blame for their current troubles. Part of that is because the Marquess runs himself ragged over the whole of the County, making sure that those he can help are helped. There’s even a small stream of refugees--even as Killian flinches at having to use the term for his own countrymen--coming in from Tipperary, Cork, and Kilkenny, mainly those who don’t want to leave, or can’t afford passage over to the United States.

The Marquess, for all that he’s stretching thin, takes them all. It’s far from perfect, and people are lucky to be scraping by on food enough for three to feed a household of seven, but it’s more than they would’ve had without him. It’s an added bonus that Killian can vouch for the fact that no more food sits on the Marchioness’ table than does his Da’s, to the point where the cook is mostly superfluous, there only to bake a loaf of bread and heat up the same meatless barley broth.

It’s that fact that finally frees Emma from her confinement at the Hall, and sends her back into An Rinn proper. Killian’s half afraid that the lift of her ban will keep him from ever going back up to the Hall, but Emma just scoffs at him when he brings it up in the most sideways manner he can manage.

“Mr. Mendell likes talking to you,” she says, head down, eyes fixed on the chess piece she’s carving, this one part of a set for August Holmwood, the son of Mark Holmwood, who he’d made a set for near on a year now. “And Mama likes having you in the house, says you’re a ‘calming influence’, whatever that means.”

“Means you’re a hellion,” Killian says with a grin, turning over the queen he’s been sanding, “and that I’m respectable, compared to you.”

“Only because she’s never seen you in your element.”

Killian raises an eyebrow. “Which is?”

Emma looks up, a grin hooking the side of her mouth. “In a bar, half drunk, telling stories no one would believe, except they’re twice as drunk as you, and willing to take anything as truth.”

“Well, I never,” he gasps, as if wounded. He might’ve been taken seriously, too, if his voice hadn’t also been pitched four octaves too high, and in his best imitation of Mrs. Cunningham, a Yorkshire woman who’d moved here from Sasana twenty years ago, but still stubbornly clung to her accent. A moment later, he asks, “And when have you ever seen me in a bar?”

“I haven’t,” she says, looking back down at her hands, “but you've got that way about you, it reminds me of one of my father’s friends.”

“Oh, aye? And who might he be?”

“She,” Emma corrects, “is a viscountess, and can drink a whole regiment under the table.”

“A whole regiment?” Killian asks, more than a bit incredulous.

“So I've heard,” Emma confirms, and so it goes: he teases her, she teases him, the village unites against them on the grounds that they've far too much time on their hands, and Killian does his best to forget kisses and dancing.

 

~~~

 

Bhealtaine, 1846  
An Rinn, An Déise, Éire  
(May, 1846  
Ring, County Waterford, Ireland)

 

Fever sweeps through the lowcountry in spring.

It’s no surprise, illness always rises with the temperature, but with the whole of the County barely scraping by the winter, instead of just some, it hits particularly hard. The elderly are the first to fall, with some getting back up, but most passing in the midst of sweat-soaked nights. The young would generally follow first, Killian’s been through enough springs to know that, but most people have been giving extra rations to the children and the babes, so for once, they’re significantly stronger than their parents.

In his visits to Mendell, Killian can see that the man is pressed to the bone, but there’s almost a guilty light of relief in his eyes when he hears the death counts. Less bodies means less mouths, which means more food to go around. It’s morbid, certainly, but it’s still a small comfort. That is, until Mendell himself falls sick, and the Hall nearly shatters from within.

There were signs, even Killian can admit there were, with Mendell growing paler and thinner, and his ever present sheen of sweat growing thicker, but none of the Hall’s residents--staff or family--had wanted to say something, because saying something didn't change the fact that three of every four people that fell ill never recovered. All sound arguments, all rendered useless when Mendell collapses in a fever on the front drive at the end of Aibreán, and doesn’t get up again.

The Marquess is a tower of tightly controlled rage, upset because he knew what was happening, what was likely to happen, and upset because even with all that, he couldn’t help the man. Mendell’s placed in the East Wing of the Hall, and Emma’s confined to the West, her only visitors her parents, the odd servant, and Killian. On this particular visit, he finds her in Mendell’s office, reading over his reports, her face tight.

“Don’t like what you see?” He asks, in mBéarla for once, before coming in and sitting down, making sure the door stays open. They’ve hit that uncomfortable age divide again, but he’s not taking the chance that he’ll forget and do something stupid. _Like continue to visit the noble girl you’ve got a thing for?,_ says the voice in his head, a voice he tells to shut up on a daily basis.

“When do I ever?” Emma sighs after he’s gotten settled, propping her head up on her fist, and looking at him over a stack of paper. “Father’s fretting, Mother’s being soothing, Mr. Mendell apparently hasn’t said anything besides asking for a priest for, uh--,” she looks at Killian, beseechingly.

“Last rites,” he supplies, grimly.

“Last rites,” she continues, “and meanwhile, it’s not like the rest of the County’s stopped doing things, but it’s like they've all forgotten that things need to be done, so here _I_ am--,” she waves at the desk with the hand not supporting her head, “--reading through reports like they actually make sense, trying to keep things at least a semblance of together.”

“Emma,” Killian starts, but then stops, unable to continue. It’s not platitudes about death she needs, or reassurances that Mr. Mendell’s soul will go to a place where he can manage a very large amount of land with an unlimited amount of resources when the fever finally burns him out. That’s not what she’s worried about, nor is it why she’s holed up in an almost dead man’s office, reading over his undone paperwork.

So he puts what he had been going to say, and holds out a hand instead. “Give half of that here,” he says, raising an eyebrow when she just blinks at him. “What? You know I can read, and you know I’ve been in here more times than I can count over the last few months. Let me help.”

Wordlessly, she separates the pile next to her in half, passes them over, and the two of them read in silence.

 

~~~

 

Nollaig, 1849  
An Rinn, An Déise, Éire  
(December, 1849  
Ring, County Waterford, Ireland)

 

It’s been over four years since he first saw Emma up in that tree, and Killian still can’t quite believe that he’s allowed up at the Hall as a _guest_ , instead of as servant of some sort. His father, the man who’d predicted the Waterfords would decamp within the month, is even employed by the Marquess, picking up the ridiculous amount of slack left by Greg Mendell’s passing. He’d been hired about three weeks after Mendell was buried and the Waterfords realized they needed someone who knew the area, and needed him fast.

Since then, Killian’s family, limited though its presence is in Éire proper, had been invited up to the Hall every Christmas Eve for dinner, along with scattered other meals through the calendar. He’d even been asked to come by himself for the last few years for Emma’s birthday, including the celebration of her eighteenth this last Deireadh Fómhair.

Right now, it’s that celebration that has him worried. The two of them--if he’s honest with himself, the one of them, since Emma’s shown no interest in him, appropriate or otherwise--have shifted back into the uncomfortably close range, except this time, with Emma finally eighteen, he doesn’t think they’re going to shift out of it again, no matter how old he is come Márta. His one reassurance is that this is a family engagement, with the Marquess and Marchioness fully present, instead of being distracted by hordes of guests. Killian’s never actually seen the Waterfords throw a party for more than fifty, but there’s a first time for everything, especially if that everything has the possibility of inconveniencing one Killian Jones.

The evening of the party is not quite bitterly cold, but approaching it closely, with any stray limb outside of the windbreak of a carriage or thick coat going numb within a few minutes. The Marquess had sent down the carriage for them, which Killian feels awkward as hell climbing into, especially since he and his father are in full view of a good half of the town--more if the half that didn’t live within sight of them had suddenly decided to visit friends and relatives, which he strongly suspected a good number of them had done. He’s less guilty than he would have been, however, because he knows that he and his father will be eating the same thing at the Marquess’ as they would at home, as they would at any other house in the County, since everyone’s living lean, no matter what the occasion.

When they get to the Hall and step out of the carriage, Killian nervously tugging at the hem of his coat, Emma’s waiting on the steps for them, backlit by the gaslamps burning inside, her hair a partially curled halo of gold. He doesn’t quite stare like he’s been poleaxed, but it’s close, and then he _is_ poleaxed, because Emma’s taken a flying leap off the last five or so steps and slammed into his arms with the full weight of velocity and several layers of heavy skirts.

“You came,” she says in the Gaeilge, voice muffled by Killian’s best coat, and he has to laugh.

“Of course I came,” he says in the same language, eyes crinkling up into a smile when she pulls back to look up at him. “I’ve come the last few years, it’d break the Marchioness’ heart if I suddenly said no.”

Emma rolls her eyes, and Killian almost says something more, but his father harrumphs next to them, and suddenly he--and he can only assume Emma, since she steps away just as quickly--realizes that he’s been holding her far too closely. The awkward moment only lasts a brief instant, and before long Emma’s chivvying them up the stairs, hands fluttering and topic bouncing from what Cook’s planning to serve to the decorations that are hanging in the dining room.

When they reach the doors to the Hall, the Marquess and the Marchioness are standing there, him looking vaguely resolute in a dark red coat, her in sparkling white and looking like she ought to rule countries, instead of just a small hÉireann county.

“M’lord,” Killian says with a short bow, his father echoing him. “M’lady.”

“Mr. Jones,” the Marchioness says, inclining her head. “Killian,” she tacks on with a smile as Emma takes his arm. The Marquess nods along with her, but stays mostly silent as the rest of them engage in the basic chitchat of people waiting for coats, scarves, and hats to go places, and butlers to make slight coughing noises from the direction of the dining room to signal that it’s time to eat. Killian feels slightly awkward about this, and his father definitely does, seeing as they never have to wait like this after his father pulls the stew off the fire. Add to that the fact that most of the servants bustling around them in a semi-unnoticable swirl are friends and acquaintances, and, well, it’s enough to make any man nervous.

Dinner goes by quickly, a haze of soft candlelight, clinking glasses, and low conversation. It’s a short table, the dining room not the massive formal one at the back of the house, but the smaller, more intimate one that tends to double as the breakfast room. Emma’s next to him, with the Marquess and the Marchioness at the head and foot, and his father across.

After dinner is finished and the last plate taken away, they all get up and start preparing to file out of the dining room and into one of the front parlors, the train lead by the Marchioness. Before Killian can follow, however, he’s stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t leave yet,” says the Marquess, looking very serious. “I have something I need to discuss with you.”

Killian turns to face him, hands going automatically behind his back. “What is it, m’lord?”

“As you may know,” the Marquess begins, “I was in the Army for several years before I married my wife.”

“Aye,” Killian says slowly, not knowing quite where this was going.

“While I was there,” the Marquess continues, “I made many friends, in various branches. One of those friends, a Captain who’s now retired, has told me that there are spaces open in the next class at the Royal Military College for those seeking to join the Royal Artillery.” He pauses, and looks pointedly at Killian. “He also asked if I knew of anyone I felt would accept a commission there. I told him I would have to ask.”

“You’d have to--,” Killian starts, then, “Me. You’re asking me. If I’d want a commission. From you. To the Royal Artillery.”

The Marquess nods. Killian doesn’t say anything, not right away, but he seems to take that as a matter of course, simply waiting patiently.

“I’d like that,” he says finally. “I’d like that very much, but--” his eyes bounce around the room, trying to evade the Marquess’ raised eyebrow and his own reluctance “--what about my da? The shop, the village? I can’t just..leave.”

“Your da is fine,” the Marquess says drily. “He’s been running things since before I ever came here, and there’s no reason he can’t keep doing it once you leave.”

Killian blinks, then narrows his eyes. “You’ve already talked to him, haven’t you? He’s already said it’s fine.”

“Not as such,” the Marquess replies, “but for all intents and purposes, yes.”

Killian looks away, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He doesn’t know where Emma got her relatively straightforward nature, but it’s certainly not from either of her parents, who’ve been talking circles ‘round him since he met them. Frustration at the Marquess’ inability to say a simple yes or no aside, he honestly doesn’t know what to do. His main defense, that his da needs him, has been shot down, and it’s not like he can say that he wants to stay so he can have a better chance of staying close to Emma, not unless he wants the offer of a commission replaced with a guarantee of a stint in gaol.

Besides, if he forgets about the fact that he won’t be able to see Emma, he wants this, wants it bad. It’s a major step up from where he is now, one he’d never be able to make on his own, and one that gives him a damn good chance of making officer. Killian’s aware that no matter what rank he achieves he won’t be anywhere near Emma’s level, but even ‘Private Killian Jones’ sounds better than ‘tenant’.

Not to mention, if his da truly doesn’t need him, his going will result in one less mouth to feed, one more portion of food that can be split among the residents of the County, an opening thankfully caused by something worth celebrating, instead of the seemingly omnipresent shade of death that hangs over the whole of Éire.

He nods firmly, then looks back at the Marquess, who’s still waiting expectantly. “Yes. Yes, I’ll take it.”

“Very good,” the Marquess says, smiling just a bit. “The classes for this year start in April. Come up to the Hall after New Years, we can discuss everything in more detail.”

“Thank you,” Killian says. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

The Marquess snorts as he starts heading towards the door. “You won’t want to thank me, not when you’ve been out five months in the muck and people keep shooting at you whenever you try to scratch an itch.”

 

~

 

Emma doesn’t know about the offer.

He’s able to figure that out as soon as he walks into the parlor and she jumps him in a manner significantly more controlled than her earlier attack. Mentioning it to her then and there is right out, for various reasons, and he’s left to stew over exactly _how_ he’s going to do it as the Marchioness waves them both over to form a second pair for a game of _vingt et un_. After the third hand, he decides that he’ll have to get her alone, after the fifth that it’ll have to be in the library, and hands six through nine are devoted to trying to find an excuse to both visit the library and take her with him.

Killian’s mere seconds from blurting out some ridiculous excuse when the Marchioness saves him, saying that she’d love to show his da a new game brought over from Imperial China, and would Emma be so kind as to get it from the library for her, and would Killian be so kind as to help her carry the pieces? He almost slumps in relief, and stands up a little too fast, though he notices that Emma says yes just as quickly.

He’d almost swear that the Marchioness had planned this, but then Emma’s grabbed his hand and they’re out of the softly lit parlor and into the dim, almost dark hallway, their footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. They don’t talk on the entire walk there, Killian too focused on trying to get his words exactly right, Emma unusually quiet herself.

When they push the door open, the library is dark except for the moonlight that streams in from the still open windows.

“What am I looking for?” Killian asks, in the Gaeilge. It’s as much a deliberate choice as an unconscious one. Most of their conversations in the past four years, once Emma got to the semi-fluent stage, have been in the Gaeilge, and he wants to remind her of that time, but the rest of it is pure habit.

“A box, about yea big,” she shapes a rectangle only slightly longer than his forearm in the air and about half as wide, “with dragons carved on the top. Mama got it from the Dowager Countess, who got it from some diplomat.”

“She must not be particularly appreciative of gifts,” Killian notes, scanning the familiar lumps that take the form of tables, chairs, and bookcases in the daylight.

“What, the Dowager Countess?” Emma laughs. “She’s _very_ appreciative, if it’s the right gift.”

“And this game wasn’t?”

“Not when no one in London can play,” Emma replies, moving further into the room.

“I see,” Killian says, his gaze stopping on a slight rise attached to the normally shorter lump of a table on Emma’s left. “Is this it?” He says, pointing as he walks over.

Emma turns, skirts rustling, and moves to stand next to him, arm going out to run the fingers of her right hand over the lid. “Yes,” she says after a moment, “that feels like dragons.”

“Uh,” he says, staring down at the box, knowing he’s running out of time, but still not sure how to phrase this. “That’s good. That we found it.”

“Very good,” Emma says, sounding almost as distracted as he feels.

They stand there in silence, him mouthing the starts to various speeches, and Emma’s fingers tapping nervously against the mahjong box.

“I,” he starts, when her fingers have stilled and he’s getting irrationally afraid that she’s about to leave before he’s even got the first word out, but then he’s not worrying about anything, because she’s leaned closer sometime during the last few minutes, and her hand, the one not tracing the outlines of dragons, has gone up and twisted itself in the hair at the back of his head and yanked down at the same time she’s gone up on her tiptoes, and her lips are on his.

It’s something he’s been thinking about for the better part of three years, and now that it’s happening he’s not sure what to do. His mind is screaming at him to pull back, to make some excuse and escape back to the parlor, but his body, traitor that it is to the cause of him not getting killed by an irate peer, is leaning in, is bringing up his own hand to tangle in her hair in an echo of what she’d done to him. They’re both inexperienced, with no idea what they’re doing beyond that they both want to do it, but Killian manages to get his head tilted a bit to the left, and Emma leans in just a little more, and they’re fine, they’re more than fine.

He doesn’t know how long it lasts, is perfectly willing to say it was an hour, and should have been more, but one of them hits the table and sets the mahjong tiles to rattling in their box, and it’s over. Emma steps back, hand dropping back down to her side, eyes wide, breathing as heavily as Killian is and, before he can say anything, grabs the carved box and runs out in a rustle of skirts and thumping feet.

 

~

 

The rest of the evening is a blur, and Killian’s pretty sure he forgot how to speak mBéarla for the first part of it, calling out melds in Gaeilge and doing nothing but blink in confusion when the Marquess and Marchioness give him odd looks.

Thankfully, after they leave, with Emma waving from the doorway in a more subdued echo of their arrival, he’s not required to be back up at the Hall until New Years. Realistically, it’s only five days, but there’s more than enough time in those one hundred and twenty hours for him to run through both The Kiss and The News at least a thousand times each.

It gets to the point that his Da asks him flat out if he’s okay, and _that_ reminds him that Leroy Jones doesn’t know that he’s accepted the Marquess’ offer either. Killian doesn’t tell him, however, because even though his Da is, well, his _Da_ , Emma’s managed to worm her way into the front of his People I Tell About Important News list.

 

~

 

On the thirty-first, Killian’s back at the Hall, though this time he’s on the back lawn, halfway between the thick woods and the Hall itself. With him are about forty other young men and women, all of whom have their hair tied back and tucked under caps or scarves, with breeches being common throughout, propriety taking a backseat to efficiency. They’re raising the myriad of tents and stalls that are the hallmark of the annual Carnabhail Gheimhridh, or Winter Carnival, and it’s more than painfully obvious from the enthusiasm levelled and the disproportionate level of actual physical exertion that this is the first employment these people have had in a while. Killian counts himself among those numbers, mainly because as much as he’s up at the Hall, he still isn’t _of_ the Hall, no matter what the Marquess may have graciously offered him.

Surprisingly, in between the crack of canvas and the slam of hammers against nails and slowly warping wood, Emma is nowhere to be found. Usually she’s right in the mix, clothes as drab as the rest of them, blonde braid stuffed into an old cap of Killian’s, laughing as she hauls on the rope that will lift the roof of the tent that holds the trampled square of grass designated as a dancefloor. Today, however, it’s past noon and he hasn’t seen her once.

 _Not that I care_ , he thinks, knocking together the top portion of a pastry stall with a little more force than is strictly necessary. _I mean, I clearly_ care _, because I’m thinking about it, about her, but it’s not like I care because of_ \--and here his mind shies away the event that he’s been alternately thinking about and avoiding for the past week or so--that _, I care because we’re friends, and that’s what friends do: they care, and they check up on each other, and they do_ not _kiss each other in their parents’ library_.

Killian sighs. He knows that he’s being ridiculous, that it’s not like he didn’t participate fully, but he can’t seem to stop spinning in circles, looking for an explanation, a way out. It’s partly because he’s been pushing this exact thing down for so long, but it’s also partly because he’s very aware of the fact that he’ll be leaving soon, and that Emma isn’t coming with him (and that even if she wanted to, the Marquess and Marchioness, not to mention the _haute ton_ and all their not-insignificant weight, wouldn’t let her). It’s a combination of not wanting to hurt her, and not wanting to lose her, even though he has a sinking feeling that that’s going to happen anyway.

“Do uair i mo shaol, ba mhaith liom rudaí is maith lena fear a bheith éasca,” he mutters, and one of the men walking past him laughs long and loud.

 

~

 

The night is aflame, star-studded black undercut by ruddy orange and yellow, the bonfires and torches of the Carnabhail drowning out even the splendor of the Hall. Laughter and the rush of wind over canvas drift across the lawn as wood crackles in the background, and someone somewhere in the throng is tuning a fiddle.

Killian’s been here since before dusk, wandering through the temporary streets after returning from short break to get dinner in the village, waving at the vendors as they set up shop, and helping wrestle some of the more unruly goods into place. Now he’s sitting on an empty wine barrel at the edge of the light from the central bonfire, a half-full mug of beer held loosely in one hand. His Da is around here somewhere, talking down fights before they start, but Killian’s been spared that duty.

He’s not drunk--the mug is his first, and will likely be his last--but he still feels a bit fuzzy, a bit distant. People are wheeling through the space in front of him, going from half-lit, to full silhouette, and back again, and all he can think is that this is what he’s leaving. The famine is still there, in the back of his mind, as it’s been for years now, but what comes to mind when he thinks of home isn’t hunger, but the warmth of fire and the flickering illumination cutting through the black.

“Being anti-social, are we?” asks a voice in Gaeilge from behind him, and he doesn’t have to turn to know that it’s her.

“Not so much that,” he says, finally lifting the mug for a sip. “More like didn’t know if I had anyone to be social with.”

She laughs, and moves to stand next to him. “There’s a whole village out there, more than that, if your Da’s to be believed, and you don’t think there’s anyone to be social with?”

“Aye,” he says, tracking the ripple of light against her hair from the corner of his eye. She’s in a dress tonight, a simple one that looks like she borrowed it from Siofra (and she probably had), and her hair’s done up in a long braid that hangs down her back. “I--,” he starts, wanting to say that he’d missed her this morning, had missed her these last five days, that he was going away, that he was leaving her, that he’d loved her for years and last night was the first time he’d ever dared think she might feel the same, but none of that gets out because she turns, smiles, and, over the sound of a fiddle settling into a reel, asks, “Do you want to dance?”

“Yes,” Killian says, sliding from the barrel and leaving his mug as a claim before taking her hand and leading her over to where the lines are forming. The dance is a whirl of color and laughter, the slam of feet muffled against the grass but echoed on a drum someone’s rustled up from somewhere. In the middle of the first set, a second fiddle joins the original, and a flute pipes up from the other side of the fire not long after. Emma’s swung down the line as the pattern shifts, skirts flaring as she goes one way and Killian goes another, both of them meeting in the middle before spinning out to partner with someone else.

When the dance finishes, everyone in their original pairs, hands still  linked and held over their heads to make a tunnel for the last couple to pass through, Killian can’t help himself. As the fiddle dies, he leans forward and kisses Emma lightly on the lips, half expecting her to pull back, to shake her head and say _no, not here, not with you, what happened was a mistake, surely you must see that_ , to echo the Emma he’s built in his head these last few days, even if that Emma is completely contradictory to the one he’s been friends with for so long.

Instead, she steps into it, both their hands dropping to rest at their sides, before she pulls away with a smile. It’s New Years, bonfire night, time of revelry and relative freedom from societal constraints, but any more than a kiss, especially between them, still requires some modicum of discretion. Aside from the overwhelming thought of _thank god her parents aren’t here_ , his head is empty, and the two of them just stand there, staring at each other and smiling like loons as the drum starts up the slow pound of the sword dance.

They finally move and the rest of the dancers move with them, clearing the area near the fire in a rough circle. Killian reclaims his barrel and pushes it to its side so both he and Emma have space to sit. A group of twenty or so men, ranging in age from mid-twenties to a rather grizzled sixty converge on the center fire, all of them holding unsheathed broadswords of various styles. There was a quick discussion between them before they broke and divided themselves evenly along the four compass points.

“What are they doing?” Emma whispers, and Killian grins. Four years in, and she’s still never seen half the things he takes for granted.

“This,” he says, gesturing at the men, “is a sword dance, of a sort. Most of the ones we have, the ones with crossed swords and lots of jumping, you've seen, but this is something particular to us, or so I’d like to think.”

“That answers precisely nothing,” she replies, and he laughs quietly.

“You’ll see, lass,” he says quickly, before she hits him for being idiotic.

The drumbeat stops for a single moment, and there is a rough shout of “Anois!” from both the crowd and the dancers. The drum starts up again, now accompanied by a steel-on-steel echo. “Cuil!” goes up from the westernmost point, and it begins.

The bonfire is low, three feet high at the most, and the first man passes over it with a long leap and a basic thrust. Another follows with an overhand cut, a parry after him, and a spinning move Killian’s sure is simply done to make the sword of its owner flash in the firelight as it passes over. To begin with, it’s all individual men and individual moves, but as the drum speeds up, so do they, adding more men as they go, clashing with rhythmic clangs over the fire before falling back to earth.

At some point, the tempo is too high for anyone to make it over the fire in enough time to stick to the pattern, and so they go around it, weaving themselves into concentric circles of flesh and clacking steel punctuated by the occasional grunt of exertion. When they’re at their most complicated, someone in the middle of the knot yells “Stad!”, and all the swords go point up with a roar.

Everything’s silent for a moment, aside from the dancers’ heavy breathing, but then the quiet is overtaken by applause and cheers as the crowd surges back into the space they’d cleared, congratulating the dancers as one of the fiddles starts a lively tune that sounds impossibly light next to the remembered _thud_ of the drums.

Killian turns to look at Emma, raising an eyebrow.

“Wow,” she breathes, then: “Can you do that?”

He can’t help but laugh. “It’s not a question of ‘can I’, because we all can, but more of ‘will I’ and ‘am I good at it’, and the answer to both of those questions is ‘ _no_ ’.”

They sit in silence for a long moment, both watching the crowd around them, before Killian says, “Your father offered me a commission.”

Emma starts. “Where?” she asks after a minute.

“Londain, to start,” he replies, “for school, you know? After?” He sighs. “After, I don’t know.”

“You’ve accepted it, haven’t you?” she says, and it takes everything in him not to look at her.

“Yes.” His knuckles are clearly white, visible even in the dim light.

“When do you leave?”

“Feabhra.”

“So a month from now.”

“Thereabouts, yeah.”

“Did you kiss me just because you’re leaving?” He looks at her. She sounds hurt, sounds like she might believe what she just said, and he wants to tell her a million different things at once, but he settles on, “No.”

“Good,” she says firmly, and they sit in comfortable silence until she pulls him into another dance.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Hanna](https://twitter.com/mojitohanna) on the occasion of her birthday in 2014, off the prompt "Emma’s supposed to marry Neal but she ends up leaving him at the altar because she realizes that she loves Killian". 
> 
> I don’t speak Gaelic (either Scots or Irish), and what's in this fic is cribbed from Google Translate or Wikipedia (its accuracy, aside from place or event names, should be highly questioned). If anyone reading _does_ speak Gaelic, or knows someone who does, feel free to correct me. The intended translations (for the non-place name terms) are visible when you hover over the words.
> 
> In addition, you’ll note that in the portions that are from Killian’s POV, he calls London ‘Londain’, England ‘Sasana’, Dublin ‘Baile Átha Cliath’, Ireland ‘Éire’, Ring ‘An Rinn’, Waterford ‘An Déise’, etc, etc. Those are, from what I was able to discern, the Gaelic names for those places, and it only fits that Killian, as a native Gaelic speaker, would use those terms (at least in his head) in favor of the English versions.


End file.
